Category: Journeys Home

I said earlier today that it feels like I’ve been travelling since June when I headed off for Montreal. And I know I was home in November, and a bit of December, but wow what an 8 months. No wonder I looked tired when I reached Thailand. This afternoon in Singapore I’m glad to be on my way home. In Inhaling colour, tasting light I promised you some more of Melaka outside the home of Tham Siew Inn so here’s my final post before home.

On Saturday we drove from KL to Melaka and found ourselves in the midst of celebrations of the end of Chinese New Year. Oh what fun. We passed the procession on the way into town and as they circled and wove their way toward their temple goal, we seemed to keep crossing each other’s paths, twisting and twirling. So much colour and vibrant life, energy. It was the celebration of the Emperor that falls at the end of Chinese New Year and brings prosperity and life. Lucky us.

In between bits of march passing us we managed to fit in one of many fabulous and huge feasts, this one in a large old home, building, warehouse that has been renovated. I was to discover a few of those over the weekend. Continue reading “Last stop before home”

I have been so privileged this trip to stay with families, to be welcomed into people’s homes, invited to share food, to sit. One of the truly great privileges of this trip was being taken by a dear friend and her family to Melaka, and then invited into the home of artist Tham Siew Inn. Such an honour to quietly spend time inhaling the atmosphere of the artist’s residence, imbibing the green of their gardens. Drinking tea. Sitting us women, peeling pomelo. Talking with family members, two sons creative artists themselves and the oh so real, material, tangible woman-wife-foundation, herself a teacher and creative floral artist. There were times sitting with the art, wandering the rooms, up and down the stairs, when I caught myself almost wondering what we were doing next, but not following the thought as time had slowed, the lime infused walls cooled the heat of stress and haste, and I wanted to just be, to be breathing, to just be. The colour breathed calm into the empty places in my soul. And of course sharing together much much wonderful local food breathed companionship into the empty places in all our bellies.

When you look out from the first floor gallery through the open windows, the old green glass with its patina of the ripples of time, you see into Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, one of the oldest streets in UNESCO listed Melaka. That’s the street where you find the artist’s gallery, and it’s a street of contrasts. From the most hip art coffee house The Baboon House, to a museum with original shoes for Chinese women’s bound feet, to a UNESCO restored house showing original architecture and building styles. The atmosphere of creativity, grounded in history, twisting and tasting and reinventing identity and vision and place. Continue reading “Inhaling colour, tasting light”

I’m not surprised, not naive or stupid. The sex industry is real, I know that. I’ve seen that. Sex tourism, thousands of years old. I know there are different ways people get caught in the industry, some choose, some don’t. I know that huge numbers of men, women and children are trafficked each year. It’s everywhere. It’s complex. I know all that. But here it’s on a scale and so in your face and so dehumanising that I just want to scream: “Stop! These sex-workers are people, they’re worthy of some respect and dignity and deserve some joy.” And I am really sad because no one would hear. We’ve stopped even joking about pretty young women (and men) taking their old grandfathers out for the night. Who knew there were so many old white men in the world. Oh and really who told them, that shaving their head made them virile and hot? I’m totally struggling with South East Asian tourism’s acceptance of commodification of the human body.

It’s their dead eyes that haunt you.

Young men and women, held in the vice like grip of old white men, being walked like dogs on a leash. Mostly around here they’re attractive very young men. The women are a bit older, somehow more desperate. Some fake a smile at their owners, but most forgo even a mask of pretended affection. All of their eyes just look dead.

It’s that it’s everywhere.

Every bar, cafe, took took, street. Day and night, though it’s worse after dark. Although by day I guess there’s also those young ones that sit like fruit on display outside massage joints. How green do you like your bananas? Young men and women, no hope, so forlorn. Their eyes look dead. Vacant. Blank. No happy ending to that viagra charged massage, not for them.

On the beach, a group of young Thai children were playing in the water. One Thai adult supervising. Later one boy appears left behind, alone with an old Slavic man. Surely not?

It’s that it seems so contrary. So wrong: these are people not objects!

The Thai people are beautiful, happy, gentle. Their smiles so wide and welcoming, so generous. We try and say Hello and Thank you in Thai. They smile wider and giggle, remember us when we return. Wave and call Hello. We smile at the “special massage” girls and boys sitting on the street, although they know we’ll say no. We buy fresh juice, coffee, snacks. We walk along and wave and smile, we try to chat with the street food vendors. These people are so generous.The waitresses at the Dutch coffee shop and the vendors alongside, so busy but still pausing to smile. The juice lady waves every time with the widest infectious smile, tells me I chose the wrong bananas and swaps them out for her best. Two juices and a bunch of bananas and she wants to give me change from $2. Our security lady hugs us and laughs, holds tight to my hand. I have to remember these happier faces.

I walked one night after dinner, just up the main street, along the foreshore. Not risking far off the tracks. I felt safe, I’m the wrong demographic. Walked around a hand job happening on the pavement, the man’s walking stick offering no privacy. Dodged a negotiation to go find a room. So many mismatched “couples” call it neo-liberal market dynamics, supply and demand, exploitation. The worst is the young Thai eyes, the dead eyes. No hope, no future, not even a mask of pretence. Do these ridiculous old men really believe these kids love them? Desire them? Or don’t they care as long as they come?

Thai people are not junk, not objects, not receptacles for white men’s stale cum. Their eyes should not be dead.

Soundtrack, a very broken Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen,
performed by Jeff Buckley

I’ve never been one for war memorials, I’ve been to one Dawn Service, never felt I wanted to go to Gallipoli. But something in me jumped at the chance to take a trip to the River Kwai, it just seemed right somehow. I didn’t really even think about what it would be, just knew I had to go. It seemed like a good reason for having found myself in Thailand.

You might question my soundtrack recommendation for this post, but it seems so right to me, the rough, broken emptiness of the empty Hallelujah of Cohen crying for meaning. And performed by Jeff Buckley, the spaces between the guitar strings become the spaces in a disillusioned heart full of longing. For me, the sun-baked jungle mountains reached out to sons of a sun-burnt country whose faith was formed in suffering in a sun-parched Judea, until it resonated with a very hot agonised human thirst for meaning. I hope you’ll come to agree that the Hallelujah respects the spirit of those men, who, although broken, dying, tortured in body, mind and soul, even in death, still remained human, remained Australian, and endured.

Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chordThat David played, and it pleased the LordBut you don’t really care for music, do you?It goes like this, the fourth, the fifthThe minor fall, the major liftThe baffled king composing hallelujah

Our journey to Hellfire Pass started at the War Cemetery in Kanchanaburi where almost 7,000 graves attest to the 15,000 total POW deaths, and signal the some 100,000 Asian civilian deaths, lives that were lost building the infamous Thai-Burma railway between 1942 and 1943. Such a short time for so much death.

Standing among the graves of unknown soldiers I felt moved to sing Amazing Grace. Wandering I saw a crocheted poppy, symbol from last Remembrance Day. A friend of mine made several of those and here I was seeing one in Thailand. How far our simple acts of love and compassion can reach.

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People from our group found the graves of some for whom they had come to pay respects. Already moved, we moved on to the site of the Bridge over the River Kwai. Bombed and destroyed and rebuilt it doesn’t seem to meet the size of David Niven, but the agony is bigger, somehow in every rail, in every sleeper, every rivet.

I had to go and look at the locomotives, two original rails re-laid, somehow they made it more real.

I love that in South East Asia there seems to be this habit of building temples near sites of suffering and death. As though prayer and stillness could ease the souls, the grief, the pain. I like it at the very least as a sign of respect and reverence.

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I’m not even sure now how much I knew about Hellfire Pass before yesterday. We got to the museum, which is so fitting, and the thing that struck me most… a sign that said: there are no artefacts in this museum. The men who suffered and died here brought nothing with them to leave behind.

Your faith was strong but you needed proofYou saw her bathing on the roofHer beauty and the moonlight overthrew yaShe tied you to a kitchen chairShe broke your throne, and she cut your hairAnd from your lips she drew the hallelujah

Warned about the number of stairs (121) and the “rough” track I headed off down the path to Hellfire Pass.

The rail bed is immediately impressive. Yes it’s been cleared and maintained as a memorial, but the engineer in me says this was a well built railway line. Cut into rock with blood. And the scenery is so gut-wrenchingly beautiful.

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I was walking along thinking how impressive it was, how incredible the feat of construction. The roughness of the cliff, cut back in to make the railway line level along the mountain side. It’s rough going even now but what stopped me, brought me up short, were the occasional sleepers still buried in the path. And I remembered again that this was built by men, POWs, by hand. Men brutalised. Feed starvation rations of plain rice, eating insects for protein. Digging through granite at the point of a gun.

And it is impressive. But then I came around a bend and saw the actual Hellfire Pass. And my immediate thought, “It’s an empty tomb.”

It was called Hellfire Pass because the Japanese forced work 24 hours a day. And as the pass was dug, the conditions and the flames of the fires that lit their work by night, were as close to hell on earth as the men could imagine. And it wasn’t imagination, they were living and dying it.

At that point I started to understand how it was that the war in the Pacific came to a place where it could only end in the otherwise unthinkable use of nuclear bombs.

You say I took the name in vainI don’t even know the nameBut if I did, well really, what’s it to you?There’s a blaze of light in every wordIt doesn’t matter which you heardThe holy or the broken hallelujah

It seemed kind of kitsch, but I felt I had no option but to take my hat off in awe, in horror, and in wonder. Awe and wonder, at the brokenness of hell, at the empty tomb filled with gut wrenching despair and loss and suffering.

And Mary stood alone outside the empty tomb and wept

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I did my best, it wasn’t muchI couldn’t feel, so I tried to touchI’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool youAnd even though it all went wrongI’ll stand before the lord of songWith nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

I was humbled in the presence of such great spirit.

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After the mist this morning we went to Saiyoknoi Waterfall, where there is no water. But the fallen leaves were being burned and created an eerie, supernatural sense of not being alone in these mountains even today. The tree roots, reaching out like some kind of skeletal being, one still shackled. Still reaching for god and home and meaning. Poppies and flower offerings for peace, on a Japanese loco, in the smoke and the sun and the drought.

Hallelujah

But I was still despairing about humanity. How can people have a future in a world of so much reckless hate? How can we have a future if it’s all happening again? Do we even deserve a future? I wandered off alone, unable to cope with other people.

But inevitably it was back in the van and we were off again to another rock cut railway with wooden trestles and I despaired.

The POWs working this section were herded each night into a cave so they couldn’t escape. And in that cave today: Buddha, incense, prayers for peace. I don’t know why, but it made me pause and wonder, maybe, maybe, maybe, is there some hope for humanity?

So after the market on the railway line, and around the most important thing I did in Thailand there were these “other” bits, that I want to show you before I wrench your hearts with the most important thing I’ve done in terms of being an Australian for a long long while. But more about that later.

I’ve not yet been to a so-called floating market that bore any resemblance whatsoever to the advertised images, so as you may see, along with my highly camouflaged companion I was suspicious. I was right. The lengthy, smelly (the fumes of outboard motors is a theme of this post), uncomfortable, knee breaking journey that went no-where, was less than fabulous, and apart from a great view of a temple and Buddha, was not resembling the advertising materials.

We walked the line… Today’s (well yesterday’s but I started this yesterday) first stop, after a 5am pickup, was a local market that sets up on an operating railway track. When the train comes through at 830 am everyone rushes their produce off the line and pulls silly tourists to safety. The main thing wasn’t so much about the train, although trains did form a pretty special overarching theme to the day, but I do love a good Asian food market. Mostly for the characters and the faces, but also the quite amazing produce.

After months on the go it’s time for a rest, thankfully I was invited here just outside Pattya in Thailand for 10 days. I’m supposed to be doing nothing and I guess a massage a day is kind of doing nothing. It’s nice. But we all know I’m still writing papers for that Canadian woman in secret.

In between working, blogging and sleeping here are some sights. Maybe I should get out more, but I’m just chilling, staying around about. Haven’t been brave enough to try the prawns at the street food stalls yet, but they look great.

There are little shrines everywhere, some tiny and cute others more elaborate, all special and cared for. Apparently even the crocodile is for good luck. I’m a bit concerned about the God’s non-communicable diseases risk as they seem to receive a lot of sugar sweetened beverages and cigarettes, but maybe the God’s are grown up enough and can look after themselves. Have to confess to having a few sugar sweetened alcoholic beverages myself. Continue reading “Time out in Thailand “

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About Wendy’s Out of Station

I write as a way of processing and reflecting on experience, and as a way of sharing that experience. When I travel I used to write email journals back to friends, family, anyone who’d read and risk immersing themselves in my reality for a while: writing for them was a way of writing for me. Borrowing from Graham Greene in a flip of Travels with my Aunt, I imagined writing letters to my nieces, as their travelling aunt. Crafting the sentences became a way of extruding the experience, giving it birth, drawing its meaning from my soul, nurturing it into something tangible with a life of its own.
The aim of my blog is to open the world to my thought-children, to let them out of the safety of my friends and family and let them experience the world. And in the process I get the honour of taking a larger group with me when I’m wandering around India and beyond, or just reflecting on parallel truths, thinking thoughts that take me to new places new beginnings.
Please journey with me